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<h1>Boost Discussion Policy</h1>
<p>Email discussion is the tie that binds boost members together into a
community. If the discussion is stimulating and effective, the community
thrives. If the discussion degenerates into name calling and ill will, the
community withers and dies.</p>
<h2>Contents</h2>
<dl>
<dt><a href="#acceptable">Acceptable Topics</a></dt>
<dt><a href="#unacceptable">Unacceptable Topics</a></dt>
<dt><a href="#effective">Effective Posting</a></dt>
<dt><a href="#behavior">Prohibited Behavior</a></dt>
<dt><a href="#culture">Culture</a></dt>
<dt><a href="#lib_names">Library Names</a></dt>
</dl>
<h2><a name="acceptable" id="acceptable"></a>Acceptable topics</h2>
<ul>
<li>Queries to determine interest in a possible library submission.</li>
<li>Technical discussions about a proposed or existing library, including
bug reports and requests for help.</li>
<li>Formal Reviews of proposed libraries.</li>
<li>Reports of user experiences with Boost libraries.</li>
<li>Boost administration or policies.</li>
<li>Compiler specific workarounds as applied to Boost libraries.</li>
</ul>
<p>Other topics related to boost development may be acceptable, at the
discretion of moderators. If unsure, go ahead and post. The moderators will
let you know.</p>
<h2><a name="unacceptable" id="unacceptable"></a>Unacceptable Topics</h2>
<ul>
<li>Advertisements for commercial products.</li>
<li>Requests for help getting non-boost code to compile with your
compiler. Try the comp.lang.c++.moderated newsgroup instead.</li>
<li>Requests for help interpreting the C++ standard. Try the comp.std.c++
newsgroup instead.</li>
<li>Job offers.</li>
<li>Requests for solutions to homework assignments.</li>
</ul>
<h2><a name="effective" id="effective"></a>Effective Posting</h2>
<p>Most Boost mailing lists host a great deal of traffic, so your post is
usually competing for attention with many other communications. This
section describes how to make sure it has the desired impact.</p>
<h3>Well-Crafted Posting is Worth the Effort</h3>
<p>Don't forget, you're a single writer but there are many readers, and you
want them to stay interested in what you're saying. Saving your readers a
little time and effort is usually worth the extra time you spend when
writing a message. Also, boost discussions are saved for posterity, as
rationales and history of the work we do. A post's usefulness in the future
is determined by its readability.</p>
<h3>Put the Library Name in the Subject Line</h3>
<p>When your post is related to a particular Boost library, it's helpful to
put the library name in square brackets at the beginning of the subject
line, e.g.</p>
<blockquote>
Subject: [Regex] Why doesn't this pattern match?
</blockquote>The Boost developers' list is a high-volume mailing list, and
most maintainers don't have time to read every message. A tag on the
subject line will help ensure the right people see your post.
<p><a name="tabs" id="tabs"></a></p>
<h3>Don't Use Tabs</h3>If you use tabs to indent your source code, convert
them to spaces before inserting the code in a posting. Something in the
processing chain usually strips all the indentation and leaves a mess
behind.
<p><a name="longlines" id="longlines"></a></p>
<h3>Limit Line Length</h3>If you put source code in your postings and your
mailer wraps long lines automatically, either keep the code narrow or
insert the code as an (inline, if possible) attachment. That will help
ensure others can read what you've posted.
<p><a name="quoting" id="quoting"></a></p>
<h3>Don't Overquote</h3>Please <b>prune extraneous quoted text</b> from
replies so that only the relevant parts are included. Some people have to
pay for, or wait for, each byte that they download from the list. More
importantly, it will save time and make your post more valuable when
readers do not have to find out which exact part of a previous message you
are responding to.
<h3>Use a Readable Quotation Style</h3>
<p>A common and very useful approach is to cite the small fractions of the
message you are actually responding to and to put your response directly
beneath each citation, with a blank line separating them for
readability:</p>
<blockquote>
<pre>
<i>Person-you're-replying-to</i> wrote:
> Some part of a paragraph that you wish to reply to goes
> here; there may be several lines.
Your response to that part of the message goes here. There may,
of course, be several lines.
> The second part of the paragraph that is relevant to your
> reply goes here; agiain there may be several lines.
Your response to the second part of the message goes here.
...
</pre>
</blockquote>For more information about effective use of quotation in
posts, see <a href="http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html">this
helpful guide</a>.
<h3>Keep the Formatting of Quotations Consistent</h3>
<p>Some email and news clients use poor word wrapping algorithms that leave
successive lines from the same quotation with differing numbers of leading
"<tt>></tt>" characters. <b>Microsoft Outlook</b> and <b>Outlook
Express</b>, and some web clients, are especially bad about this. If your
client offends in this way, please take the effort to clean up the mess it
makes in quoted text. Remember, even if you didn't write the original text,
it's <i>your</i> posting; whether you get your point across depends on its
readability.</p>
<p>The Microsoft clients also create an unusually verbose header at the
beginning of the original message text and leave the cursor at the
beginning of the message, which encourages users to write their replies
before all of the quoted text rather than putting the reply in context.
Fortunately, Dominic Jain has written a utility that fixes all of these
problems automatically: <a href=
"http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/outlook-quotefix/">Outlook
Quotefix</a> for Outlook Users and <a href=
"http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/oe-quotefix/">OE QuoteFix</a> for
users of Outlook Express.</p>
<h3>Summarizing and Referring to Earlier Messages</h3>
<p>A summary of the foregoing thread is only needed after a long
discussion, especially when the topic is drifting or a result has been
achieved in a discussion. The mail system will do the tracking that is
needed to enable mail readers to display message threads (and every decent
mail reader supports that).</p>
<p>If you ever have to refer to single message earlier in a thread or in a
different thread then you can use a URL to the <a href=
"mailing_lists.htm#archive">message archives</a>. To help to keep those
URLs short, you can use <a href="http://www.tinyurl.com">tinyurl.com</a>.
Citing the relevant portion of a message you link to is often helpful (if
the citation is small).</p>
<h3>Maintain the Integrity of Discussion Threads</h3>
<p><b>When starting a new topic, always send a fresh message</b>, rather
than beginning a reply to some other message and replacing the subject and
body. Many mailers are able to detect the thread you started with and will
show the new message as part of the original thread, which probably isn't
what you intended. Follow this guideline for your own sake as well as for
others'. Often, people scanning for relevant messages will decide they're
done with a topic and hide or kill the entire thread: your message will be
missed, and you won't get the response you're looking for.</p>
<p>By the same token, <b>When replying to an existing message, use your
mailer's "Reply" function</b>, so that the reply shows up as part of the
same discussion thread.</p>
<p><b>Do not reply to digests</b> if you are a digest delivery subscriber.
Your reply will not be properly threaded and will probably have the wrong
subject line. Instead, you can reply through the <a href=
"http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.devel">GMane web
interface</a>.</p>
<h3>Keep The Size of Your Posting Manageable</h3>
<p>The mailing list software automatically limits message and attachment
size to a reasonable amount, typically 75K, which is adjusted from
time-to-time by the moderators. This limit is a courtesy to those who rely
on dial-up Internet access.</p>
<h2><a name="behavior" id="behavior"></a>Prohibited Behavior</h2>
<p>Prohibited behavior will not be tolerated. The moderators will ban
postings by abusers.</p>
<h3>Flame wars</h3>
<p>Personal insults, argument for the sake of argument, and all the other
behaviors which fall into the "flame war" category are prohibited.
Discussions should focus on technical arguments, not the personality traits
or motives of participants.</p>
<h3>Third-party attacks</h3>
<p>Attacks on third parties such as software vendors, hardware vendors, or
any other organizations, are prohibited. Boost exists to unite and serve
the entire C++ community, not to disparage the work of others.</p>
<p>Does this mean that we ban the occasional complaint or wry remark about
a troublesome compiler? No, but be wary of overdoing it.</p>
<h3>Off-topic posts</h3>
<p>Discussions which stray from the acceptable topics are strongly
discouraged. While off-topic posts are often well meaning and not as
individually corrosive as other abuses, cumulatively the distraction
damages the effectiveness of discussion.</p>
<h2><a name="culture" id="culture"></a>Culture</h2>
<p>In addition to technical skills, Boost members value collaboration,
acknowledgement of the help of others, and a certain level of politeness.
Boost membership is very international, and ranges widely in age and other
characteristics. Think of discussion as occurring among colleagues in a
widely read forum, rather than among a few close friends.</p>
<p>Always remember that the cumulative effort spent by people reading your
contribution scales with the (already large) number of boost members. Thus,
do invest time and effort to make your message as readable as possible.
Adhere to English syntax and grammar rules such as proper capitalization.
Avoid copious informalism, colloquial language, or abbreviations, they may
not be understood by all readers. Re-read your message before submitting
it.</p>
<h2>Guidelines for Effective Discussions</h2>
<p>Apply social engineering to prevent heated technical discussion from
degenerating into a shouting match, and to actively encourage the
cooperation upon which Boost depends.</p>
<ul>
<li>Questions help. If someone suggests something that you don't think
will work, then replying with a question like "will that compile?" or
"won't that fail to compile, or am I missing something?" is a lot
smoother than "That's really stupid - it won't compile." Saying
"that fails to compile for me, and seems to violate section n.n.n of the
standard" would be yet another way to be firm without being
abrasive.</li>
<li>If most of the discussion has been code-free generalities, posting a
bit of sample code can focus people on the practical issues.</li>
<li>If most of the discussion has been in terms of specific code, try to
talk a bit about hidden assumptions and generalities that may be
preventing discussion closure.</li>
<li>Taking a time-out is often effective. Just say: "Let me think about
that for a day or two. Let's take a time-out to digest the discussion so
far."</li>
</ul>
<p>Avoid Parkinson's Bicycle Shed. Parkinson described a committee formed
to oversee design of an early nuclear power plant. There were three agenda
items - when to have tea, where to put the bicycle shed, and how to ensure
nuclear safety. Tea was disposed of quickly as trivial. Nuclear
safety was discussed for only an hour - it was so complex, scary, and
technical that even among experts few felt comfortable with the issues.
Endless days were then spent discussing where to put the bicycle shed (the
parking lot would be a modern equivalent) because everyone understood the
issues and felt comfortable discussing them. </p>
<h2><a name="lib_names" id="lib_names"></a>Library Names</h2>
<p>In order to ensure a uniform presentation in books and articles, we have
adopted a convention for referring to Boost libraries. Library names can
either be written in a compact form with a dot, as "Boost.<i>Name</i>", or
in a long form as "the Boost <i>Name</i> library." For example:</p>
<blockquote>
<b>Boost.Python</b> serves a very different purpose from <b>the Boost
Graph library</b>.
</blockquote>Note that the word "library" is not part of the name, and as
such isn't capitalized.
<p>Please take care to avoid confusion in discussions between libraries
that have been accepted into Boost and those that have not. Acceptance as a
Boost library indicates that the code and design have passed through our
peer-review process; failing to make the distinction devalues the hard work
of library authors who've gone through that process. Here are some
suggested ways to describe potential Boost libraries:</p>
<ul>
<li>the proposed Boost <i>Name</i> library</li>
<li>the Boost.<i>Name</i> candidate</li>
<li>the <i>Name</i> library (probably the best choice where
applicable)</li>
</ul>
<p>Note that this policy only applies to discussions, not to the
documentation, directory structure, or even identifiers in the code of
potential Boost libraries.</p>
<hr>
<p>Revised
<!--webbot bot="Timestamp" S-Type="EDITED" S-Format="%d %B, %Y" startspan -->28
May, 2005<!--webbot bot="Timestamp" i-checksum="38549" endspan --></p>
<p>© Beman Dawes, Rob Stewart, and David Abrahams 2000-2005</p>
<p>Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See
accompanying file <a href="../LICENSE_1_0.txt">LICENSE_1_0.txt</a> or copy
at <a href=
"http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt">www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt</a>)</p>
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